Ladies and gentleman, we’d like to welcome you to Tromaville. Founded in 1974 by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, Tromaville is nestled somewhere in the wild suburbs of my home state New Jersey. Half cartoon and half bloody nightmare, Tromaville is filled with exploding heads, severed limbs, and mutants slathered in a gelatinous ooze. Power plants and corrupt authority figures preside over teenage cliches. The language spoken is Cheeseball and if you listen closely you’ll hear 80’s glam rock filling the air. The town’s oldest and most celebrated fable is THE TOXIC AVENGER a film that has become a cult classic, making Tromaville an important destination for any horror fan.

Co-Directed by Kaufman and Herz in 1985, the film tells the story of Melvin Junko, a nerd who’s the janitor at a trendy Tromaville Health Spa.

There, Melvin is the object of ridicule for a band of testosterone fueled bullies who play a game where points are earned by running over innocent Troma-ites.

One day Melvin snaps under the pressure and he flings himself through a window into a vat of toxic waste on the street below.

He undergoes a horrific transformation that leaves him incredibly strong, disastrously ugly, and inclined to stamp out evil.

Armed with only his mop, Toxie exacts revenge on the bullies and a host of others including the corrupt Mayor of Tromaville.

There are deaths by head crushing, deep frying, disembowelment, and ice-cream sundae, to name just a few. There’s a parade of real boobs. And our unlikely hero falls in love with a blind woman and lives happily ever after with her in a toxic dump.

I first watched THE TOXIC AVENGER one intoxicating Saturday afternoon with my intoxicating buddies when I was sixteen years old. And I remember being confounded. I knew it was a terrible, ridiculous film. I knew that there was a good reason that I had never seen a film like it before. And I knew that I had loads of fun watching it.

But I didn’t know why.

Returning to Tromaville all these years later, I think I can better put my finger on it. It has something to do with the heart of the hero and by implication, the heart of the filmmakers. We’ll get to all that in a minute. But I think a good place to start is to look the toxic elephant in the room right in its toxic eye, and stick a fork in it:

Despite what you think of the film, guys… is it even a horror picture?